breaking new ground in design, technology, and storytelling.
DESIGNER
Cheryl’s professional passions include design leadership and strategy, game design, cross-platform design, multimodality, collaborative design and facilitation, service design, and applied storytelling for product design.
Best known for her work on popular products including Amazon’s Alexa, the Echo Look, MARVEL Strike Force, the Riot Games platform and game library, Cortana, Disney’s PhotoPass, The Sims, and Microsoft’s Azure platform, Cheryl is currently Creative Director for the Game Studio at The Pokémon Company International.
WRITER
Cheryl is the author of Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences (Rosenfeld Media, 2020) – a book she describes as “the design manual for folks who aspire to build the bridge of the starship of their dreams.” Design Beyond Devices has repeatedly returned to the Amazon best sellers list in its categories and has been used by multiple major corporations to drive their technology innovation practices.
Cheryl is a Verified author on Medium and her posts have been featured on the platform for years, including Staff Picks and the Medium Fellowship program. Her writing has been published by Katie Couric Media, Forbes.com, and the Huffington Post.
SPEAKER
From TEDx to international keynotes, Cheryl’s tech industry experience and performing arts background have made her a sought-after speaker around the world. Cheryl is founder and owner of Ideaplatz, LLC, a design education company. She’s shared her talks and workshops on 5 continents, in over 15 countries, and at dozens of virtual events.
Highlights include Interaction Latin America 2019, UX Days Tokyo & Seoul 2019, TEDx Seattle 2019, UX Scotland 2019, Webdagene 17, UX Week 2018, DesignOps Summit 2018, UX London 2018, and UxLx (Lisbon) 2017.
ACTOR
A veteran film, video, stage, and voice-over actress, Cheryl is best known for co-starring in multiple Twitch Actual Play TV shows and her own Twitch channel FunnyGodmother (Sundays 10AM PT) Her professional improv experience includes 13 yrs at Seattle’s Unexpected Productions (ensemble, teacher), 9 yrs with Seattle Experimental Theater (cast, staff), and 12 yrs with NERDprov (founding member).
As an experienced emcee, Cheryl was honored to serve as Toastmaster for the 58th Annual Nebula Awards with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association in 2023.
meet Cheryl
Cheryl Platz is an internationally renowned design leader, author, teacher, speaker, and actor based in the Los Angeles area. Her book Design Beyond Devices is available via Rosenfeld Media and most online booksellers in print and digital formats. She is the owner of design education company Ideaplatz, LLC, and an adjunct faculty member with Carnegie Mellon University‘s Heinz College and their Master’s of Entertainment Industry Management (MEIM) program. She is currently Creative Director of the Game Studio at The Pokémon Company International, focused on development of Pokémon TCG Live.
In 2020, Cheryl was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and received life-changing surgeries from Dr. William Ericson to restore her ability to work at full productivity while using ergonomic equipment.
Design Career
An East Coast native and graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in computer science and human-computer interaction, Cheryl spent the first half of her life in Pennsylvania. At Carnegie Mellon, she had the unique opportunity to study with Randy Pausch (“The Last Lecture”), who she counted as a teacher, mentor, manager (during her time as a TA in his Building Virtual Worlds class), and eventually a friend during his sabbatical at Electronic Arts.
Cheryl’s professional career began with video gaming (Maxis/EA, Griptonite Games) and theme park technology (Walt Disney World), but she also spent years working on cloud and enterprise software like Azure (Microsoft) and technology for large scale philanthropy (Gates Foundation) as well as groundbreaking consumer products like Alexa (Amazon) and Cortana. She then returned to the entertainment industry, starting with her time as Director of UX for the Player Platform and head of the UX craft at Riot Games, where she applied everything she learned about cross-device experience strategy to bring groundbreaking experiences to players worldwide on projects like the Xbox Game Pass partnership, the Project L / 2XKO launch, and the digital Arcane Season 2 experience.
Performing and Hosting
Cheryl’s professional acting and hosting work has been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world, from multi-cam livestream TV shows on Twitch and dozens of comic convention and arts festival appearances to her design TikTok account of 36,000 followers. Her unique and versatile background eventually brought her to the stage as Toastmaster for the 58th Annual Nebula Awards with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Association in 2023.
Volunteering and Community Outreach
Cheryl has a long history of engagement with community organizations, including 2 years on the executive board of STEM nonprofit IGNITE Worldwide (Inspiring Girls Now for Technology Evolution); serving as an administrator with the community advocacy group The Online Creators Association; extensive volunteer work for Unexpected Productions and other arts organizations; guest lecturing, judging and mentoring with a number of design and tech training programs including the Harvard Extension School and Mentor Me Collective; and numerous guest appearances as a workshop instructor and panelist for grade school STEM programs (DigiGirlz, Girls Who Code, IGNITE).
In 2021, Cheryl completed the initial endowment of her Future Voice Scholarship at Carnegie Mellon University for underrepresented undergraduate students in order to pay forward the scholarship support she received as an undergraduate Andrew Carnegie scholar.
Published by
Prototypr
UX Collective
Microsoft Design
Featured in
Appeared on
SyFy Wire
Nebula Awards 2023
Big Changes for Cheryl in 2024
In January 2024, Cheryl was one of the 530 people who lost their jobs in the layoffs affecting 11% of the company. She was honored to spend most of 2024 as Director of Experience Design on Scopely, Inc’s MARVEL Strike Force. However, a wild job appeared and Cheryl made the bittersweet decision in November 2024 to leave Scopely earlier than intended to accept a role as the first Creative Director of the Game Studio at The Pokémon Company International.
Cheryl is now based half in Seattle to support her work on-site with The Pokémon Company International, and half in her hometown in a suburb of Philadelphia, PA where her husband lives to support his career as a professional stage and film actor in the New York/New Jersey market.
Cheryl is also a returning adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University’s Masters of Entertainment Industry Management program in Hollywood, CA, where she teaches her original video game class “What Makes Us Play: The Craft of Video Games.” Her second book, Enduring Play: Creating Video Games that Thrive, is inspired by this class material and will be published by Rosenfeld Media in 2025.
Design beyond devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-device experiencess
by cheryl Platz – published by rosenfeld media
Your customer has five senses and a small universe of devices. Why aren’t you designing for all of them? Go beyond screens, keyboards, and touchscreens by letting your customer’s humanity drive the experience—not a specific device or input type. Learn the techniques you’ll need to build fluid, adaptive experiences for multiple inputs, multiple outputs, and multiple devices.
Learn more at: RosenfeldMedia.com – Amazon.com – Goodreads
For sample chapters, downloads, podcasts, and more, visit the book resources page at Ideaplatz.com.
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